TOPICS OF • THE DAY.
THE NORTHERN MESSAGE. POWER is teaching Mr. Lincoln those reticent forms under which, in English opinion, a statesman's work should be done. His Message this year is marred by none of that diffuseness, made original by none of those quaintnesses which all his previous utterances have educated us to expect. That slight hesitation, too, which was formerly so percep- tible, a hesitation as of a man doing his thinking aloud, and anxious to fortify his own judgment while convincing the country, has entirely disappeared. The Message is pervaded throughout by a new and impressive tone, as of a man who at last sees his way, whose mind is made up, and who will never again debate the policy he has adopted. The old forensic tinge is, of course, there still, for it is as natural to the constitution-loving President as to the Illinois lawyer; but the tinge is now that which pervades the judge's, not the advocate's mind. He does not argue with the nation, or with a party within the nation, or with the foes who are still barring the nation's way; but he delivers a charge, a final summing-up of the law, which, "while he occupies his posi- tion," will be executed, be the resistance what it may. Taking up a half-forgotten clause in the Constitution of the United States, a clause which binds the central authority "to guarantee to every State a republican form of govern- ment, and protect it against domestic violence," and re- membering his own prerogative of pardon, he builds there- on a polity as wide as the mischief to be put down. That clause, it is certain, was intended to apply to all cases in which a minority of well affected persons were threatened by a majority hostile to republican institutions, and in that sense he employs it to work a revolution in the South. Recognizing that slavery is the very root of the existing civil war, and that any desertion of the blacks "would now be a cruel and astounding breach of faith," he, by a proclamation added to the Message, but defended within it, offers the South the following terms:—Every citizen who has brought himself within the scope of the general laws against treason, or of the special laws passed by Congress against this particular treason, —i.e., nine-tenths of the South—may, on taking an oath to maintain the decree of emancipation, receive a full pardon. His life will be thenceforth safe, all his property, except slaves, will be restored, and he will be competent ex facto to all and every political act. In short, by ceasing to be a slaveholder he will become a citizen, not a tolerated resident, not a pardoned "suspect," not even an inhabitant of territories still in a dependent condition, but a citizen with every right as complete as Mr. Lincoln himself enjoys. Par- don for treason, —and secession is treason, even if we recognize the revolutionary right,—was never offered on more merciful terms ; but the President goes one step farther. In his eager constitutionalism, too eager, unless Mr. Chase is indeed to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he bids the South re- member that the proclamation to which they swear is the pro- clamation as interpreted by the highest judicial body, towards which even the South has always professed respect. Every individual in the South is offered free and instant pardon, to be claimed as of right, to be enjoyed without reservations, pro- vided only that he will consent to live the free citizen of a free republican State. After this announcement, never yet equalled in humanity, except by a British Ministry in an Irish case, we do trust we have heard theiast of Mr. Lincoln's legal cruelty.
Cold he is, as the Ernes has said, but it is with the coldness of an immutable resolve. Rising without abruptness from the individual to the State, Mr. Lincoln announces for that also a mode of re-entry to peace and quietness. Whenever one-tenth of the male inhabitants have accepted his offer, have an- nounced, that is, their desire to be free citizens of a free State, the State powers shall on one other condition revive. The condition is that slavery cease. The Legislatures may take time, may impose stringent laws against vagrancy, or still more stringent rules against idleness, may visit a " master- less knave" with the penalties once inflicted in England,.may do anything "consistent as a temporary arrangement with the blacks' present condition as a labouring, landless, and house- less class,"—but they must set them free, free of the lash and the auction-block, free to read and to worship, to possess their wives and to guard their children like other human beings. Each State may, we imagine, vote compensa- tion in any form it pleases, may, for example, tax the blacks for a generation for the benefit of their old owners, or vote the wild lands to the planters, an acre for every dollar's worth of emancipated flesh, but slavery they cannot retain. If they will retain it in spite of all,—why the demand for the war for the coming year is still one hundred and eighty millions. Take the Southern States to be what you will—empires conquered by the sword or revolted pro- vinces subdued by the Government—and terms more moderate were never offered by successful civilized ruler. If Russia offered them to-morrow to Poland, Le., absolute and real auto- nomy, her own laws, her own officials, her own language, her own system of teaching, her own taxation, and a dominant vote at St. Petersburg, on the single condition of enfranchising the serfs, what would be Tory scorn if the offer were refused? Yet the blood feud between South and North is of three years' standing ; between Poland and Russia of six hundred.
So much for the justice of the new polity ; now for its expe- diency. We are not of those who expect that this offer will be received in the South with acclamation, or bring the war at once to any acceptable end. The talk of Lord Lyons having endorsed Mr. Seward's ninety days is talk merely, invented in order to influence the sensitive market for cotton.. The leaders are all excepted from the amnesty, and in the South the leaders lead; the Generals are all excepted,—a real mistake—and the army which they have led on successful battle-fields will never give them up. The terms by their very nature involve a temporary re-union with triumphant "Yankees," and the South hates Yankees even when not triumphant ; above all, they involve emancipation, and the South, once driven to think of accepting them, may emanci- pate for itself. But the terms offered are, nevertheless, it once just and wise. They convince the North that the hour has arrived when the quarrel must be fought out, and so give to the whole nation the strength which springs from the sense of a Cause ; they convince the slaves that the Federal Govern- ment, whatever its temptations, will never break faith with them; and within the South itself they organize disaffection. Throughout North Carolina and in the uplands of Georgia, all over Arkansas, and in the hill section of Tennessee, exist men who, though not devoted to the Union, are not de- voted to slavery, and rather than war on for ever will re-organize their States as free. Constitutional tradition is strong, and power accretes to regular governments even when supported only by a minority. Everywhere as a State is traversed by the troops they will leave behind them a regular organization, as strong, and we greatly fear as stern, as minorities in possession of power are apt to be. That authority will have at disposal its own section of whites, in- creased every day by waverers, all immigrants from the North, all Northern soldiers settled in garrison, and the whole black community, that is, huddled together as they now are fully one-half the South. It is possible with those means to pacify the States, to re-organize society, and to pat down, once for all, the legal sanctions of human slavery. Slavery once at an end, and the blacks settled down as a humble but free population, making their own way by study, and thrift and usefulness towards political rights—a process which their use as soldiers will greatly facilitate—the irritation created by slavery must gradually disappear, and the Union will hang together until the different but free civilizations naturally produced outside and within the tropics once again reveal to the North and the South their in- herent antagonism. Then, when the cause for separation may be one which will not injure mankind, Europe may be justified in wishing for that absence of uniformity in America which in Europe has made civilization one grand competitive rush. All that, however, is dreamy, and for the present the only fact worth attention is that the Message and proclamation, while binding the North together, sow dissen- sion in the South, and secure final emancipation with the least possible disturbance of the existing order. We have little more to say of the Message, the first columns of which are filled with facts of purely American interest. Mr. Chase's statement will require an analysis of its own, but we must here remark that President Lincoln seems at length to have perceived the fairness of English counsels, and though he cannot but think, as it is his duty to think, of the chances of his own re-election he makes no ad captanclum appeal to catch the Irish vote: The Message begins with acknowledging that the British Government has "fulfilled just expectations," speaks of all pending questions in a tone of conciliation, and expresses the full determination of the United States to "do justice to foreigners." There is a total absence on this subject alike of hectoring and of argument, and the tone employed suggests that misfortune has at last taught the executive of the Union that international states- ) manship, like all other statesmanship which does not employ, coercion, is based on mutual concession.
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